Kaluga Ugra and Yasnaya Polyana

A south-west Moscow circuit joining landscape art, literary heritage and wooded roads.

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Why this ride

A south-west Moscow circuit joining landscape art, literary heritage and wooded roads. The road: M3, M2 and regional roads. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.

Roadbook

1. Moscow start

   Moscow does not do small. It has more than ten million people, a ring road, the MKAD, that encloses a space bigger than many countries' capitals, and a centre that is arranged in concentric circles like the rings of a tree. At the middle is the Kremlin, the red-brick fortress on the Moskva river, with its golden-domed cathedrals and its walls, and beside it Red Square, with the colourful domes of St Basil's. The city was first mentioned in the chronicles in 1147, and grew from a modest wooden stockade into the capital of a vast empire.

   To ride in Moscow is to be reminded of its scale. The Garden Ring and the Third Ring carry huge flows of traffic, drivers are fast and aggressive, and motorcycles filter between lanes at speed. The best time to explore on two wheels is a summer evening, when the light lasts until late, the traffic eases, and the bridges over the river are lit. The skyscrapers known as the Seven Sisters, built under Stalin, rise from the skyline, and from Sparrow Hills, the high ground near the university, you can see the whole city spread out in a haze. The metro stations, designed as underground palaces, are worth leaving the bike for.

   From the city, a favourite day trip leads north-east to Sergiev Posad, about seventy kilometres away, where the Trinity Lavra of St Sergius, the most important Russian Orthodox monastery, stands inside white walls with blue and gold domes. The road passes through forest and farmland, and pilgrims fill the monastery on holidays. It is a good outing for a long day, with plenty of cafes in the town and stalls selling painted wooden toys, a local craft.

   Fuel is found everywhere in the city and along the main roads, and the cafes range from cheap canteens to fancy restaurants. Summers are warm and can be thunderous, while winters are long, dark and very cold, with snow from November to March. Before planning any trip, check the current travel and entry conditions carefully, as they change often and can affect insurance, border crossings and the practicality of riding in Russia.

2. Zhukovo stop

   This town on the Protva River carries the name of Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet marshal who commanded at Moscow, Stalingrad and Berlin and is probably the most famous Russian soldier of the twentieth century. He was born in a peasant house in the village of Strelkovka, a few kilometres away, and the area has made much of him: there is a museum dedicated to his life, a monument, and the town itself was renamed in his honour in the 1990s. It has around twelve thousand people and the quiet, practical air of a district centre.

   The Protva valley is pleasant country, with the river winding between wooded banks, meadows and small villages. Just to the north lies Obninsk, the science city where the world's first nuclear power station for civilian grid use was switched on in the 1950s; it is now a museum, and the town is full of research institutes. Between these two places the landscape is surprisingly green, with pine forest and birch groves, and the river attracts fishermen and summer swimmers.

   For riders, Zhukovo works as an early stop on a route heading south toward Kaluga and the Ugra River. The roads around here are typical of the Kaluga region, a mixture of decent main roads with trucks and narrower country lanes with patched surfaces, gentle curves and a few hills where the road dips to cross a stream. In autumn the colours along the Protva are lovely, and on a clear day in early summer the light is long and soft well into the evening.

   The practical side is simple. Fuel stations, shops and cafes are easy to find in town, and Obninsk, about eleven kilometres north, has the full range of services, from supermarkets to workshops. If you want to see the Zhukov museum, it is small and well kept, with personal belongings and wartime material, and gives a sense of how far one peasant boy from these fields travelled. Afterwards, the riverbank is a good place for a quiet break before heading on toward Kaluga.

3. Kaluga stop

   Kaluga's most famous resident was a deaf schoolteacher who spent his evenings calculating how a rocket might leave the Earth. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky lived here for decades, teaching mathematics by day and writing on space travel, multi-stage rockets and orbital stations at a time when most people thought the idea absurd. The city is proud of him to a degree that is almost touching: his wooden house is a museum, and the State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics, a large modern building above the Oka, holds rockets, capsules and a remarkable collection of the Soviet space programme's history.

   The city itself is old and sits on high ground above the river. It has around three hundred and forty thousand people, a centre of merchant houses and churches, the long arcaded Gostiny Dvor, and a famous stone bridge across a deep ravine, built in the eighteenth century and still in use as a pedestrian route. Kaluga was also close to a decisive moment in Russian history: in 1480 the armies of Moscow and the Golden Horde faced each other across the Ugra River nearby, and the Tatar withdrawal is traditionally seen as the end of the Mongol yoke.

   Riding in, expect city traffic, trolleybuses and some poor surfaces, but also good views of the river as you cross. The real pleasure begins outside: the roads following the Ugra and the Oka run through forest and meadows, with gentle hills, river crossings and long, quiet stretches. Spring brings flooded meadows along the rivers, and early autumn is beautiful, with birch woods turning gold.

   As a stop, Kaluga covers everything. Fuel, workshops, supermarkets, hotels, restaurants and coffee shops are all here, and the centre is walkable. The space museum takes a couple of hours if you are interested, and even a short visit is worth it for the sheer strangeness of seeing a Soyuz capsule in a provincial city. The view from the high bank over the Oka at sunset is a good way to end a day, and the city is a sensible base for exploring the Ugra National Park and the land art of Nikola-Lenivets to the west.

4. Nikola-Lenivets stop

   Of all the places on a ride through the Kaluga countryside, Nikola-Lenivets is the one nobody expects. It is a tiny village on the Ugra River surrounded by forest and meadows, and over the past three decades it has become the site of one of Russia's best known land art parks. The artist Nikolay Polissky started working here with local villagers in the late 1990s, building enormous structures from wood, hay and branches, and the place has since grown into a sprawling park with installations scattered across fields and woods, some playful, some monumental. A summer festival, Archstoyanie, has drawn architects and artists from around the world.

   The setting is the Ugra National Park, a protected stretch of river valley with oak and pine woods, flood meadows, sandy beaches and steep banks. The river here is clean and slow, popular for canoeing in summer, and the air smells of hay and pine. In spring the meadows flood and the birds return in huge numbers; in autumn the woods go gold and the mornings are misty. It is a landscape that rewards slowing down.

   Getting here is part of the experience. The final approach is on minor roads, sometimes gravel or rough tarmac with potholes, through forest and small villages. Nothing technical, but after rain the dirt sections turn sticky, and on a heavy touring bike some care is needed. Traffic is light except on festival weekends, when the lanes can be crowded with cars and pedestrians. Aim for a weekday in June or September, when the park is quiet and the light is soft.

   The village itself is small, with around a thousand people in the surrounding area, and services are limited. There is accommodation in and around the park, including some unusual architect-designed cabins, and simple food during the season, but do not count on more. For fuel and supplies, Kondrovo, about twenty-two kilometres away, is the nearest town of any size, and Kaluga is within reach for a full range of services. Allow a few hours to walk around the installations; the scale is impossible to grasp from photos.

5. Ferzikovo stop

   Ferzikovo is a district village of four thousand or so people east of Kaluga, set back from the right bank of the Oka where the river makes its long swing toward Aleksin and Tarusa. Nobody comes here for the village itself, and it would not pretend otherwise: a few streets of wooden and brick houses, an administration building, shops and a church. What makes it a good stopping point is the country around it, which is some of the loveliest along the middle Oka.

   The river here runs between high, wooded banks and broad meadows, and the villages along it have that particular central Russian look of grey timber, blue window frames and gardens full of apple trees. This stretch of the Oka attracted painters and writers for a reason. Downstream, between Aleksin and Tarusa, Vasily Polenov built his house and studio on the bank in the late nineteenth century, and the estate, now a museum, is still one of the most beautiful places on the river. Tarusa itself was home to Marina Tsvetaeva in her childhood summers and to Paustovsky later.

   The roads around Ferzikovo are minor ones, with patched tarmac, gentle hills and occasional sharp dips where the road drops to cross a stream or a gully before climbing again. There are long views across the valley from the higher ground, especially in the late afternoon when the light comes in low from the west. Traffic is light on weekdays, a little heavier on summer weekends with dacha owners heading out of Kaluga. Watch for loose gravel at junctions and the odd unmarked speed bump through villages.

   Practically, Ferzikovo has basic shops and should have fuel on the main road, but for a wider choice of food and services Aleksin, about twenty kilometres away, is the better bet, and Kaluga is around half an hour west. If you are riding on toward Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's estate near Tula, the route continues through farmland and forest. Take a moment on a high point above the Oka before leaving; on a calm summer evening, with the river shining and swallows over the meadows, this is central Russia at its gentlest.

6. Tula finish

   Russians have a saying about carrying coals to Newcastle, and theirs is about taking your own samovar to Tula. The town has made samovars since the eighteenth century, and a museum of them stands in the center, with brass giants, tiny travelers' models and the elaborate urns used in merchant houses. Tula also made guns: Peter the Great founded an arms factory here in 1712, and the weapons works supplied the Russian army for centuries, so the old gunsmith's craft and the brass-tea tradition sit side by side. Add the gingerbread, spiced and printed with a pattern, and you have the three things Tula is known for.

   The Kremlin is the visual center, a red-brick fortress finished in the early sixteenth century on the bank of the Upa River, with towers, thick walls and a cathedral inside. It is more compact and less ceremonial than Moscow's, and it served as a frontier stronghold against Crimean Tatar raids. Inside the walls, a pair of museums, one for weapons, the other for local history, are worth an hour. The city has a long, rather industrial skyline, but the old streets near the river retain a handsome, provincial charm.

   Fourteen kilometers southwest lies Yasnaya Polyana, the estate where Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828, lived most of his life and wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The house is preserved with his study and library, the park has birch alleys and ponds, and his grave, a simple grassy mound in a patch of woods, is deliberately unmarked by a cross or inscription, as he wished. It is one of the most moving places in Russia, and well worth the ride.

   Tula is a major city, so fuel, food and hotels are everywhere. The M2 highway links it to Moscow, about 180 kilometers north, and is fast but heavily used by trucks. The countryside to the south, near Kulikovo Field, where Dmitry Donskoy defeated the Mongol-Tatar forces in 1380, is open, rolling farmland with big skies. The best time is late spring or early autumn, when the light is soft and the roads are dry. Spring thaw and heavy winter snow make the side roads tricky, and summer heat can be intense on the open plain.

Where this sits

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